


Artos, Knight-errant

by mortuus_lingua



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur incognito, Arthur is not a prat in this one, Flirting, M/M, Merlin is a bit cheeky, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortuus_lingua/pseuds/mortuus_lingua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A shady tree, a pond. Arthur is returning to Camelot and finds a comely young man along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artos, Knight-errant

Arthur hadn’t meant to stop that afternoon. Camelot was within a day’s journey; he figured he could make it at a steady pace. 

But the sun was so very hot and high in the blazing blue sky, and when he stopped to let the horse rest and drink from the little pretty lake there in the middle of the forest, the shade looked so cool and inviting under the shelter of the trees. Sitting with his back against a convenient tree trunk and looking out at the placid lake with its dragonflies and waving grass along its shore, he let his eyes sink and then close and soon fell asleep there, with a soft breeze in his face. 

A splash brought him abruptly back, and he grabbed at his sword as he jerked upright, startled. His horse whickered behind him among the trees, seemingly undisturbed. But Arthur could only see the ripples on the surface of the lake, and that was all.

Until a slender, dark-haired youth emerged from the water right in front of him, naked and white-skinned, thin as a reed and tall, pushing too-long wet hair out of his face as he stepped up the sloping shore. 

Arthur stared; for a moment he wondered if he’d come across one of those fabled water spirits the storytellers would longingly warn people about, the ones who seduced and pulled men to their watery graves. But in the same moment as dark blue eyes blinked and opened, startled, he realized that this was just a man like himself. And when a blush suffused the chest, throat and then face of this stranger, Arthur’s judgment was confirmed. 

“Oh, I-“ the young man began, “I beg your pardon! I thought I was alone here.”

That wasn’t too much of a stretch. Arthur had fallen asleep in a very shady area. Eyes dazzled by the sun on the lake would not have seen him there. Then his charger, Aster, moved about, and the boy’s eyes landed there, and then on Arthur’s clothes. 

“—Sir Knight?” the stranger amended hastily, with just enough uncertainty in his voice to communicate his grasping for some understanding of who Arthur was in relation to himself, and what sort of deference he was due. This was unique to Arthur. He’d never met anyone who hadn’t known who he was. That this young man assumed he was a knight was a novel and enjoyable experience.

“That’s right,” he found himself agreeing, strangely reluctant to add this boy to the growing list of sycophantic toadies of his acquaintance. Well, not really a boy. Despite the wide eyes and clean shaven face, the evidence of maturity was almost staring Arthur full in the face. This was a man, for all of his skinniness and fair skin. “Sir Ar—Artos,” he invented. “And who are you?”

“Oh, I’m just… ah, Merlin, sir. I’m a bit of nobody, and I’m really sorry to have almost trampled right over you, um, in my …er…” The young man, Merlin, glanced down at himself, and flushed an even deeper shade of red. “Yeah, well, uh, I’ll be going back…” He waved vaguely to the lake. “…now…”

“What, back to your home in the lake?” Arthur asked with a smile.

“Oh, no. I left my things on the other side, there – “ Merlin pointed to part of the shore in a direct line with Arthur’s current one. He turned to look, as if to confirm he was pointing in the correct direction, and Arthur’s eyes were gifted with a lovely perspective of the young man’s milky hips and buttocks. He had an extraordinarily sweet dip between the small of the back and his rise of his arse. Arthur would know; he was a connoisseur. 

He was also too well bred to let his appreciation show, so was not caught ogling when Merlin turned back around, did a little awkward bow, and dived back into the water. He watched a little wistfully as the long, white form sank out of view only to appear again on the other shore. Probably some villager with a girl waiting for him at home, a man like that. Despite his awkwardness and a pair of overlarge ears, the rest of him was extraordinarily pretty, and of good proportion. Lucky girl.

He shifted to rise and his stomach gave a large, insistent gurgle; he laughed to himself, going to fetch the food from his saddlebags. When he sat back down and began riffling through the foodstuffs the cooks had packed for him, an idea occurred to him.  
“Merlin!” he shouted at the vague form hidden mostly from view by waving lakeside grasses. “Are you hungry?”

 

“This is awfully nice of you, Sir Artos,” Merlin mumbled around the food in his mouth. Apparently that skinny body packed in quite a bit of sustenance, and the young man was clearly appreciative if all that moaning was any indication.

“Well, I couldn’t eat all of this, and I’m to arrive home tonight, so it would only spoil by the time everything was properly unpacked.” He eyed Merlin as the commoner tore into the bread with gusto. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Mm?” Merlin’s blue eyes gazed at him, and Arthur felt an unwanted lurch of arousal in his cock at the brightness of those eyes, and watching Merlin swallow his food before talking was another treat. Arthur could get some late night fantasy material off of this man. “Oh, not that long ago! Yesterday, really. I just forget, sometimes, to stop and find something.”

“You’ve been foraging?” 

“Some. My mum packed me some bread and cheese, but it wasn’t much. We don’t have much… uh, where I come from.”

“Where’s that?” Arthur wanted to know, attempting to distract himself. Despoiling a commoner was not chivalrous behavior, no matter how aroused he was. 

Merlin paused, then said: “Ealdor.”

It wasn’t a name Arthur knew. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Yeah. It’s a bit of a journey. Can I ask-?”

“Oh, I’m from Camelot.”

Merlin’s eyes lit up in a way that was altogether frightening. “Really? Camelot? Do you serve the king?”

“Certainly, and the prince.” Arthur poured himself wine into a goblet and passed the skin to Merlin. “Do you know much of Camelot?”

“Not really. Just the stories. Do they really – “ His voice lowered, trembling. “Do they really burn people there?”

Arthur almost dropped the cup. “Not recently, no, and only practitioners of magic. You’ve nothing to fear.”

Merlin bit his lip and took a swallow of wine. “Oh,” he said, not sounding particularly reassured. Arthur didn’t blame him. Who knew how many innocents had been killed, mistaken for sorcerers? And, by god, did that boy have to tip his head back just so, and give Arthur all sorts of bad ideas the line of Merlin’s throat, and how it moved when he swallowed?

His own wine was having a softening effect, and Arthur sighed and leaned back against his lovely tree. “Aren’t you afraid, traveling alone?” he asked, unaware the question had been there a long time, waiting to be expressed. 

“Afraid? Not really. I mean, I’m careful because there’s … you know… unscrupulous people hanging about the roads, but I’m not on the road…and the closer to Camelot, the safer it seems to get.”

“That’s the whole point of having knights patrolling this area,” Arthur agreed. “How do you know that I’m not unscrupulous?” An awful big word, for a peasant, but he let that slip by.  
Merlin grinned at him. “Oh, you’re one of the good ones. I can tell.”

“Really?” Arthur leaned forward, fascinated. “How can you tell? Do I gleam brighter? Do my eyes say ‘honorable’?”

The young man laughed. “Well, you do look honorable, but actually it was your horse.”

“My horse?”

“Yeah. I figured if a man had some sympathy for his horse, he has some sympathy for those under him. And you left your horse without hobbles when you stopped here. That means he’s got a reason to be faithful and not want to run away.”

Arthur stared, only momentarily diverted by ‘for those under him’ and blinked. “Or, he could be very well trained.”

“Sure. But he’s also healthy and happy. And you stopped here for him, not yourself.”

The boy was a wonder. Arthur really wanted to lay him. He resisted the urge to squirm, to readjust his erection for comfort and instead leaned back, as if negligently, and took a drink of wine. “That’s pretty interesting reasoning,” he said at last over its rim, and for some reason Merlin blushed and glanced away.

Was his erection showing? He didn’t think his tunic was that snug. Perhaps the man was unused to wine. Or… or (his traitorous mind slyly insinuated) Merlin was feeling something akin to what he was. Perhaps Merlin didn’t have a young woman waiting at home, but a young man. Arthur did shift then, not able to stop the effect of his suppositions. 

Then Merlin bit on his lower lip and looked at Arthur through a fringe of black lashes, and Arthur finally got it. These were signals, and if Arthur wasn’t overthinking things, he would have figured them out ages ago. The thing was, no one had danced this particular subtle dance with Arthur. Servants and knights were generally very straight forward about such things. He sat up now, attentively willing to learn each and every expression and gesture, and Merlin smiled at him with bright, anticipatory eyes.

Arthur had never been smiled at like that. He tried to remember the smiles of tutors, servants, knights, squires and lovers, and he couldn’t recall a single full-out smile. 

A shade of worry touched Merlin’s eyes. “Are you … all right, sir?” he asked, sensing something amiss. “Am I, uh, overstaying my welcome?” In other words, was he trying to seduce a man who was not interested?

“No!” Arthur knocked over his goblet in his haste to grab a hold of Merlin, any part of Merlin, in order to keep him from retreating. In this case, he had grabbed a knee. “You’re … fine just where you are.”

Merlin tilted his head and asked in quite a different tone: “Exactly where I am?”  
Arthur took a breath, and smiled. “Well, perhaps you could be a bit closer.”

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, wish this was longer. What can I say? It got away from me.


End file.
